Kitchel-Lindquist Dunes

Soon these dunes will be blooming.  There are trails to follow and birds to see.  Last time I saw an American bald eagle.  It's a great place to walk.

.The Dynamic Great Lakes  Please click the link

Dutchman's Breeches and the Bookman in Grand Haven, MI

I will be at the Bookman in Grand Haven MI on May 1 declaiming poems and showing a few of my watercolors.  I will be at the Bookman again on June 20 at 6-8 pm with my new book, Between Sweetwater and Sand.  See you there.

Dutchmans Breeches

Delicate dances in strong April winds

blowing off Lake Michigan—

Delicate wild flowers grow

Under tall pines

Under high sand dunes

Called Rosy Mound.

Tiny white wild

Flowers tremble on green stems

Dance amid lacey green leaves.

They are called Dutch mans breeches.

Did Dutch men ever dance like this?

                                        --Barbara Spring

Powerful Winds of Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan has the wind power for all sorts of sports: wind surfing, kite boarding, kite flying, sailing and the like.



Prevailing winds have built sand dunes on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan.  Some of the best sand dunes in the world are found here.  Read more about dunes in The Dynamic Great Lakes.

Michigan's Singing Sands

Michigan’s Singing Sands

Build sand castles or lie on the beach, boogie board, kite board or sun bathe. Sand beaches in other parts of the world are o.k., but sand beaches in Michigan are of an especially fine quality. Why? someone asks.

This sand is composed of quartz granules, dark colored magnetite and other fine grains of rock. People love to walk in the so called singing sands…it feels good underfoot. When a toe or shoe is dragged across the sand, there is a high pitched sound or singing. This is due to the high quartz content of the sand.

At any time of year, you may find people enjoying the cool wooded dunes at Hoffmaster State Park on the shore of Lake Michigan in Norton Shores near Muskegon. Some of the best sand dunes in the world are found here and along the coasts of the Great Lakes. At Hoffmaster State Park, there are beaches and places to camp, trails through the wooded dunes, and stairways to climb over the dunes to breathtaking views of Lake Michigan. Naturalists take visitors and school groups through the park and point out owls, song birds and plants.

But to really learn about the dunes, you must visit Gillette Nature Center at the center of the park where there are displays explaining how the dunes were formed by actions of the glaciers and the west wind. The displays show dynamic dune succession: that is how dune plants and animals change over time. It was in dunes such as these that Henry Chandler Cowles studied botany and then wrote “ The Ecological Relation of the Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan” in 1899. The discipline of ecology was born in dunes like this.

There are hands on displays, kids really go for this, on the lower level and a collection of creatures…mammals, reptiles and fish found in and near the dunes.

In the fall, the changing colors of leaves are worth a walk in the dunes and in winter, people like to cross country ski on an old logging trail that hugs the side of a dune. In spring, wild flowers bloom under the trees. Bird migrations pass through here.

Many beautiful and unique dunes were leveled in the past and their intricate ecosystems destroyed by mining the sand for industry and building subdivisions. We still have some dunes left to enjoy on the Great Lakes. They are well worth preserving. After all, they were created over thousands of years. Once gone, dunes with their intricate ecosystems, can never be resurrected by humans.

Marram Grass Builds Sand Dunes

In West Michigan the wind and waves have built sand dunes. Some of the best dunes on the planet are found there. Marram grasses hold the dunes together.  Their roots weave a network of webs under the sand that keeps the sand from escaping.  Pictured is marram grass but there are other types of grasses.

Read more about sand dunes along the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

This book is suitable for readers from middle school through adult and is available at bn.com, Amazon.com and is available for Amazon's Kindle e reader.